


i carry your hearts with me ( i carry them both in my heavy heart )

by avioletqueen



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Swearing, Unrequited Love, some mentions of sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-27 02:50:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2676221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avioletqueen/pseuds/avioletqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You aren’t supposed to fall in love with your roommate. Or your roommate's girlfriend. But then again, Nate's always been a bit of a fuck-up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i carry your hearts with me ( i carry them both in my heavy heart )

You aren’t supposed to fall in love with your roommate. 

It’s, like, the first rule of being a functioning adult in college, and Nathan Miller doesn’t think he’s going to have a problem with it, because he’s not gay or anything. At least, he thought he wasn’t gay. Then he meets Bellamy Blake, and, well, all of that thinking goes to shit. 

By some blessing or curse by whatever higher power was up there, Nathan Miller is rooming with possibly the most attractive man to ever grace the face of the earth. And it’s not just in the face too. He’s charismatic, intelligent, studying History and Communications and shit, it’s hopeless. 

Nate has never been one to crush on people. He either maintains a friendly distance or falls fast and hard. So as soon as he feels that vague stirring in his chest that he knows is a sign of worse to come, he holes himself up in his room, thanks every god he remembers from his world cultures courses that they have separate bedrooms in this little suite. 

“Hey, man.” He’s not going to fucking look up from his suitcase even if Blake’s at his door, so he just nods as he pulls out clothes. “Um – this is awkward, but do you mind if I walk around shirtless? Just- checking, I guess.”

What the fuck, Nate thinks, and he turns around with the full intention of saying no, but that’s before his eyes catch the line of his hipbone slipping into his pants. In his defense, how is he supposed to say no to that?

And Blake looks relieved, almost, as he nods and goes back to his little room, leaving Nate to press a hand to his forehead in complete exasperation.

It’s been two hours of rooming with Bellamy Blake, and Nate’s already in love. 

\---

The problem with Blake is that he knows he’s all that. It’d be an insufferable quality if he actually did have some failing, but he’s literally perfect, so Nate can’t fault him for loving himself. 

Or fault anyone else from noticing him. 

Nate himself is a little awkward and nerdy around girls. He’s good at being friends with them, but bad at progressing to anything more. It’s not their fault – Nate’s just painfully hesitant and unsure. Making the first move gets him anxious beyond the ability to even function. It’s easier on his nerves to keep people at an arm’s length, though it’s harder on his heart.

Another reason he’s lucky that they have separate bedrooms, because Bellamy’s the exact opposite. When the semester starts, he’s got a different girl in his room every night, and Nate knows it’s wrong to be jealous of the high-pitched whimpers and moans he hears from the other room, but that doesn’t exactly stop the green-eyed monster from rearing up. 

Blake abruptly stops a couple months into the semester, and Nate doesn’t ask him why. It isn’t his place, and anyway, he gets the feeling that Blake never would’ve even begun if he knew Nate could hear so clearly through the walls. But he can’t deny that Blake getting a grip means that he starts getting a good night’s sleep again, without having to wonder who it is this time on the other side of the wall.

\---

He’s desperate for this attraction to stop, desperate to force himself into an obsession with someone else, if only to get over this hopeless love that’s never going to go anywhere. 

There’s the one blonde in his General Psych class; Clarke Griffin. Well-read, pretty nice, and hot as fuck. Nate noticed her on the first day, and now, she’s the perfect way to get over the stupidly wonderful Bellamy Blake. She’s safer, more the type of girl he usually goes after.

He invites her over to his room to study for next week’s test, because that’s loads easier than actually asking her on a date, and she accepts with a warm smile that begins to tug at his heartstrings. And when they’re sitting side by side on the couch, her laughing as he mocks their slow, incoherent teacher, he begins to think this might actually work. 

And then his roommate shows up. 

“Bellamy fucking Blake,” Clarke exclaims, getting to her feet as Blake’s eyebrows raise, practically reaching his hairline. 

“Clarke fucking Griffin,” he returns mockingly, letting his backpack drop onto the ground. “Shouldn’t you be preparing for that debate in Public Speaking, princess? Or have you already accepted that I’m going to kick your ass?”

“As if, you son of a bitch,” she retorts easily. “You’d better study your ass off, because I’m going to destroy you up there.”

It’s easily the sexiest conversation that Nate’s ever witnessed in his life. How incredibly unfair, that two beautiful people should be so fucking irresistible when they interact. The two of them barely manage to get through the chapter, because Clarke’s distracted by sniping with Blake, and Nate’s distracted by how much their banter turns him on. The moment she leaves, he goes to the bathroom and takes a cold shower, during which he comes to a couple horrible, awful, no good conclusions.

He feels the same way about both of them, because Nathan Miller is a terrible fuck-up of a human being. And Griffin and Blake are probably going to start messing around in a week, tops. 

Fuck his life.

\---

He walks in one night after studying till three, and they’re doing it. 

To be specific, Clarke Griffin is on his fucking couch in her underwear, straddling a nearly naked Blake’s lap, and Nate’s eyes go wide before he has to remember not to look. He averts his gaze as they jump apart, raising his hands as a buffer between him and them, but he’s still gotten a good enough look that will stay with him for probably the rest of his life. 

“Sorry, sorry, Blake, you asked for the room, I just- I forgot,” and this is just punishment, for being so caught up in himself that he doesn’t pay attention to his roommate’s simple requests. Punishment in the form of what he wants, but can never have.

Seriously, for a guy – no, a freak – who genuinely wants to get over two people at the same time, he sure has a penchant for ending up in situations like this. 

“Wait, Miller-” But Nate’s already out the door before Blake can finish his sentence. He’s not ready to face them right now. He needs to force himself to study more nauseating diseases so that he doesn’t let himself jerk off to that millisecond glimpse of Clarke’s hips grinding against Bellamy’s. 

\---

“Miller, listen up.”

Nate looks up immediately from his laptop to see Blake lounging in his doorway, and he swallows. “Yeah?”

“My sister’s getting engaged, and Clarke can’t come to the party with me. Do you want to go with?”

It’s what he’s wanted to hear from Blake for so long, but in such a wrong way. He doesn’t want to be a backup date, but he really, really wants to be Bellamy’s date. Even just to an engagement party. Fuck, he’s hopeless. 

“Will your family be alright with you bringing a guy?” he asks, trying to will his goddamn heart to beat just a bit slower.

“O’s my only family, and she knows the truth.”

“The truth that you’re going out with Clarke?”

“The truth that I’m flexible.” And if the eye contact they make after that isn’t significant, Nate doesn’t know what it is. There goes all hope of getting his pulse back to a reasonable rate.

“Fine. Yeah, sure. It’s this weekend? I- don’t have plans.” As always.

“Cool,” Bellamy replies casually, but his attitude is one of immense satisfaction, and Nate gulps as he continues staring at his door long after Blake’s gone back to his room. 

Shit. This isn’t going to turn out well.

\---

It’s that weekend that Nate discovers how attractive the Blakes are. Octavia is beautiful in that effortless way that screams how much better she is than the rest of the world. She’s not his type, though he doesn’t know whether that’s because she’s brash and brunette, or because she’s engaged. He thanks the stars anyway, that he’s only meeting her now, because adding a third person to his already troubling list of crushes would be impossible. 

It’s harder than he thought it’d be, because everyone here knows Bellamy, so everyone here wants to know about him. He’s too awkward to pretend to be something he isn’t, so he tells each person who asks that they’re just roommates. He says it again, and again, and again until he’s tired of hearing the words that further condemn him to such a small part in Bellamy’s life. 

“Do- you want to dance?” he manages to ask his roommate, his date, the love of his fucking life, because stumbling along on the floor would probably be easier than fielding another question from an interested family friend. 

“Yes, please,” and Blake pulls him onto the dance floor before he can say another words. They’re both awful, but it makes Bellamy laugh, so Nate figures he’s doing something right. Dancing becomes swaying while talking about inane things, such as the terrible fate Nate had apparently saved him from: the family friend who likes to give Blake shit about his choices of major and would’ve approached had they not elected to make fools of themselves on the floor instead. 

It’s so wonderfully normal. It’s beyond belief, that Nate could actually have part of what he wanted, if only for an evening. 

But it hurts too. It hurts, because Octavia really loves the groom (Lincoln, he thinks his name is). It’s apparent in the simple way that they gaze at each other as the night is coming to a close, like no one else exists outside of their little sphere. It pains him to his very core, because he knows Bellamy and Clarke look at each other in exactly the same way.

It’s starting to feel like no one’s ever going to look at Nate like that. Or, more accurately, that he’s never going to want anyone to look at him like that, aside from the two people who never will.

\---

Clarke’s a constant presence around their suite these days, chatting with Bellamy or studying in a corner, and Nate finds it easy, for the most part, to avoid her. It’s worse when they’re both there, because whenever they’re together, he gets the feeling that they’re talking about him. The way they speak in murmurs, glance at him whenever he walks past… they’re probably not talking about him, because he’s not an interesting topic of conversation, but it feels like it. 

Alone, Clarke is usually easier to deal with. Except one day after the engagement party, when he knows that Blake’s at a meeting, she slides into his room, making him rue the fact that he ever leaves the door unlocked.

“Hey, Miller,” she says easily, sitting down on his bed next to him, and Nate’s brain, heart, everything just stops when her arm brushes against his, and god, maybe he really should just hook-up with a random girl, because this infatuation has officially become ridiculous. 

“Clarke,” he manages to say, clearing his throat and forcing himself to think of unattractive images – boils, scars, anything but the swell of her hips - before turning to her. 

“Can I just--?” She makes a vague little gesture with her fingers, and suddenly, her lips are on his, and this is wrong. 

It feels so right, but it has to be wrong, because normal people don’t love more than one person at a time, and Nate’s just a greedy freak who’s messed-up in the head. He has to pull away from her before he regrets this. 

So he does. Breaks the kiss, despite the startled look it brings to her eyes, and jumps to his feet. “I’m—sorry,” he stutters out, even though she started the kiss – or maybe he did, maybe he’s been so focused on himself and his own feelings lately that he’s the one who leaned in. It’s too much. 

It’s too fucking much, and he shuts out whatever Clarke’s saying as he scrambles to head for the door, even though he’s running away from his own suite, and of course, when he opens the door, Blake is standing right there, back from his meeting. 

“Blake, I—I kissed Clarke,” he blurts out, but the taller boy isn’t even paying attention, looking over Nate’s shoulder to lock eyes with Clarke, who’s followed him out of his room. Nate is about to say more, about to apologize, about to go straight to the Head of Housing and plead to be moved out of this fucking suite, when Bellamy catches Nate’s cheeks in his rough palms and forces them to make eye contact. 

“Miller,” and his voice is so gentle that Nate doesn’t know what’s happening. Is Bellamy actually forgiving him for making moves on his girlfriend? He doesn’t deserve that. “Miller,” he repeats, a little more sternly, and Nate realizes how hard he’s shaking in Bellamy’s hands, because this is uncharted territory, and there’s no formula for how to act right after one of your crushes kisses you and the other holds you by the cheeks in a way that makes you feel like he’s holding your heart. 

“We want this.”

It’s too fucking much. Nate can barely parse what the words mean through his dazed confusion, and Clarke isn’t helping by coming up behind him and carefully resting her hands on his shoulder. “You… want this?” He repeats, pulling away slightly from Bellamy to look over his shoulder at Clarke, and god, his whole body feels cold when moving away from the older boy’s touch. 

“Yeah,” she says softly, nodding. “You… want this too, right? Both of us?”

All he can do is laugh brokenly, because things like this don’t happen to people like him. People like him don’t get propositioned for threesomes by the people they love, because that’s not how the world works. But his nerves are practically worn through by now, and he decides that he might as well take advantage of their momentary bout of insanity, and so he whispers, “I want this.”

The words are barely out of his mouth before Blake’s lips are on his, and Clarke is pressing open-mouthed kisses against his neck, and he can’t breathe in the best fucking way. 

\---

When he wakes up, he finds himself in Bellamy’s room, caught in a tangle of limbs, sandwiched in the best possible way between Bellamy and Clarke. The first thing he notices is how big his roommate’s bed is – he must have brought in his own furniture and gotten rid of the rickety university-issued bedframe. It takes him a couple moments to remember how he got here, to sit up, blinking the stars from his eyes as he flushes a bright red, all the way to his ears. “I- blacked out.”

“Yep. I take it as a compliment,” Bellamy drawls, stretching out like a cat before Clarke smacks him on the arm. 

“Don’t worry about it, Nathan,” she says, sitting up as well, and he’s never liked his given name as much as he does in this moment. 

In this moment that’s coming to an end. “Um. Right.” He swallows, looking between them, then lets out a long breath. “I should probably go now, right?”

“What?” Bellamy asks, surprised, and the confusion comes back full force because it seems like he’s misread the situation once again. 

Thank god for Clarke Griffin, reaching out to carefully clasp his arm with her warm, small hands. “Nathan, we don’t just want sex with you. We want a relationship with you. If… if you want that too.”

Fuck. Fuck, it’s the breaking of a tension that’s lasted for months, and Nate’s so tired and relieved that all he can manage in response for a moment is catching her fingers in his hand, reverently pressing his forehead to her knuckles. It takes some time before he manages to say, “I’d like that,” and even those three words are too much. He shouldn’t be crying, because he’s a man, and he shouldn’t be anxious all the time, because he’s a man, and there’s so many ways in which he’s so unworthy, and they still want him. He’s vaguely aware of Bellamy propping himself up in shock through the haze of tears over his eyes, and he tries to blink them away before he embarrasses himself further, but then he feels them pulling him into their arms.

He sobs brokenly against their shoulders, overwhelmed more than anything else, and for the first time in ages, it doesn’t hurt his heart to breathe deep. Clarke’s fingers in his hair and Bellamy’s hand smoothing down his spine help. They both help. 

“You should’ve told me,” his roommate murmurs against his forehead. “I didn’t notice until Clarke pointed it out a couple weeks ago. That’s why I asked you to the party, but you got so high-strung there, towards the end, I thought-”

“I get—nervous, sometimes,” Nate admits with a shaky laugh, because he can do that with them. Murmur his secrets without fear of judgment. 

“Tell us if we make you nervous, yeah, Miller?” Bellamy concludes, pulling back a little so that Nate can actually blink up at him. “I’m going to be looking out for you. And so is the princess here, I suppose.”

Clarke nudges him in the ribs, and Nate feels himself smiling despite the tears, actually, genuinely laughing for the first time in a long while. 

He doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t feel like he’ll understand it for a long while. But as long as these two want him in their life, he’ll be there. He knows that without a doubt.

\---

People don’t get it, at first, but once they’ve held his hand through the initial bout of rumors that lasts about a week, it becomes a normal part of campus life. Jasper Jordan burns things, Monty Green smokes weed, and Bellamy Blake and Clarke Griffin are both going out with Nathan Miller, who is objectively the luckiest male student on campus. 

It’s not easy, per se, but he’s happier than he’s ever been in his life. They kiss him, tease him gently in public, until the day he calls them ‘his idiots’ and knows they won’t leave. They hold his hands on the way to class, unafraid to lavish unashamed affection on him. 

At night, he gets to curl up in Bellamy’s bed between them, cheek pressed to bare shoulder, arms held tight around his body. This is where he wants to be. This is, he realizes eventually, where he belongs. 

And every night before he succumbs to sleep, he thanks whatever higher power is up there for making him roommates with Bellamy Blake.

**Author's Note:**

> I would love comments! This fandom needs more poly love and Miller love, always. Unbeta'd.


End file.
